


what did it cost?

by writerforlife



Series: Falling Universe [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, more communication!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 14:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16042259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerforlife/pseuds/writerforlife
Summary: During a foray into the soul stone, Tony comes across a familiar face.Set after THE THING ABOUT FALLING





	what did it cost?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm blown away by the response I got to the last work in this series. Thank you, everyone! I would highly recommend reading the first work in this series before this, because it draws heavily on something that happened. It's also heavily inspired by this post: http://starkravinghazelnuts.tumblr.com/post/176885500463  
>  Happy reading :)

**** When Tony opens his eyes, he thinks he’s dreaming. Or has finally gone crazy from the stress. Or his nightmares have become even more realistic. Any, or maybe all, of the above. Sunset colors bleed together and sprawl across the sky in a beautiful unfurling of nature. Tony’s breath hitches as he realizes he’s standing in ankle-deep water. It laps at his pajamas pants and cools the air around him. Tony presses his hand to his chest, jolting when he doesn’t feel the comforting hardness of the arc reactor or the hole in his chest.

Shit. The ripped-open space in the center of his chest is gone. 

Definitely dreaming. 

“Hello?” Tony calls, because you can do stupid things in dreams and get away with it. “Anyone else here?” He wades through the water, revelling at the way it feels to move without a twinge of pain in his chest. It’d been ten years since he’d had that sensation.  _ Ten years _ . He shudders a little bit. Of the ten years he’d been Iron Man, how many had he spent chasing after Thanos? Chasing glimpses of the future that manifested? Chasing the destiny that would lead him to a cliff on an alien planet, that would lead Steve to…

No.

He’d been doing well.

He couldn’t bring him into dreams, too. 

His therapist told him a moment would come where he’d have to forgive himself. He wanted to say that maybe he would when he could look at blue or red without flinching. When he didn’t close his eyes to see Steve falling calmly. When Bucky’s became more corporeal, more of a man and less of a shadow. Yeah.  _ That’s  _ when he’d forgive himself.  Days he spent with Peter made things better, made him thankful for every action he’d taken, but the nights where he listened for Bucky’s choked-off sobs, nightmare-induced scream, and terrifying lapses into Russian erased any progress. 

“Anyone here?” Tony calls. He has to do something besides think about how he killed Captain America. That  _ really  _ would’ve made Howard hate him. 

“Tony?” 

Tony turns on his heel and feels his heart drop as he stumbles back. 

“Steve?” he asks. 

Steve stands in front of him, stick-skinny at about a hundred pounds, coming up to Tony’s shoulder—barely. Everything about him was compressed—his broad shoulders narrowed to a boyish width, cheekbones and jaw sharper, limbs skinnier and shorter. His eye color was duller, hair less shiny, but even nearly a foot shorter, he stood with the same raw defiance Tony had seen in battle after battle. 

“Did we win?” Steve asks. Same voice. Same tone. “Against Thanos. Did we win?”

God. He’s going to have to cut back on coffee before bed. “Yes,” Tony whispers. 

A smile plays across Steve’s face. “Good. Bucky?”

“Safe.”

“And your kid? Peter?”

Tony blinks back tears. This one’s going to be a kicker to discuss with his therapist. “Safe. Steve, this isn’t real.”

“It’s real. We’re in the soul stone. I’ve been waiting here since I died.” Steve surveys the orange sky, eyes bright. Tony swallows a response.  _ Since I killed you.  _  “It’s almost perfect here.”

“Almost?”

“No Bucky.”

Tony inhales. This is too much. Too much. “He didn’t wring my neck. I think he’s still planning to, you know, with the murderous past and all, but—”

“I know it hurts.” Steve’s gaze turns mournful. “I know what I asked you to do.”

“To kill you. I try to sleep, but I wake up thinking about pushing you off that goddamn cliff. I can barely look at Bucky. I always feel like someone’s going to hold me accountable for what I did one day. Someone will find out the truth about how Captain America died and come for vengeance, and there I’ll be.”

“They won’t,” Steve says. “You did the right thing.”

“Yeah?” 

“You’re just lost right now. You’ll find yourself. You’ll be Tony Stark again.”

“Somehow, through all the crazy things that happened, I think you were you the entire time,” Tony says. “Steve Rogers.”

“I lost myself a few times.” Steve smiles sadly. “I wasn’t a perfect soldier—”

“But you were a good man.”

Steve furrows his brow. “I never told anyone about that conversation.”

“What conversation?

“Before I got the serum. Erskine told me that I had to promise to be not a perfect soldier, but a good man.” Steve looks away. “He died after that.”

“I had someone like that, too. In Afghanistan.” Tony forces away memories of Yinsen bleeding out, of Yinsen buying him time. Nope. One traumatic experience at a time. “He told me not to throw my life away.”

“I’d say you succeeded.” Steve’s sad smile endures, and Tony wishes he could remove the expression permanently. “I never was good without a war.”

“You could’ve been.” Tony laughs bitterly and swipes his hand over his teary eyes. “You could’ve been more than what the world let you be.”

“I was when I died, Tony.” Steve puts his hand on his shoulder, and Tony allows a tear to slide from his eye. “Will you tell Bucky something?”

“No. Tell him yourself. We’re going to find a way to get you out of here.” Tony’s done the impossible before. Getting Steve out of the soul stone should be basically a vacation.

“You know why you’re here tonight,” Steve replies. “The stone is smarter than us.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

Tony closes his eyes, remembering the message Thor sent him earlier.  _ Destroying the stones soon. The universe will be rid of them, and anyone who has the same ideas as Thanos.  _ “I can tell him to wait.”

“I made my choice, Tony.” Steve’s voice fades, along with the vibrant orange of the soul world. “Tell Bucky I’m sorry I’m not with him. I didn’t mean to leave before the end of the line.”

_ I’ll tell him.  _ Tony means to shout it, for his words to touch the edges of this universe, but his voice doesn’t reach. He shouts it again and again, willing it to reach Steve. It has to. He just has to be louder. 

“Mr. Stark!” someone shouts. “Mr. Stark, wake up. Come on.”

“Up, Tony. Eyes open,” another person says.

Tony gasps and sits up in bed. He grapples at his chest, feeling for the hole in his chest, before hands grab him. Peter crouches beside his bed, frowning and eyes wide. He grips Tony’s wrists, like he has over and over after returning to Earth. 

“You were screaming,” Peter whispers. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

“Do you need me to call Pepper?” Bucky steps out of the shadows, hair mussed but eyes bright. So he wasn’t sleeping. 

“I thought…” Peter’s shoulders slump as he rests his head on the mattress. Tony absentmindedly puts his hand on the side of Peter’s head. “You were screaming so loud. I thought someone was…” 

“You sounded like you were being murdered,” Bucky supplies. Upon hearing him, Tony’s throat goes dry.

“I saw Steve,” he blurts. 

Bucky’s relaxed stance turns coiled, like someone tugged a rope to pull him tight. “In a dream.”

“No. The soul world. It was an echo of him, Bucky, nothing I could take back.”

“So a dream.” 

“He told me that he was sorry that he couldn’t stay with you until the end of the line.” 

Bucky blinks. Then, he sits down  _ hard  _ on the floor and grips the carpet. 

And he cries. 

Peter kneels silently by the edge of Tony’s bed, breathing in the way that indicated he was trying really,  _ really _ hard not to cry, too. 

Tony makes a mental note to bump up the frequency of Peter’s and his own therapy.

All the progress they’d made, unraveled.  

“I thought we were getting better,” Peter whispers. 

“Joke’s on you, kid.” Tony meets Bucky’s eyes over Peter’s bowed head. Bucky sniffles, but a small smile comes to his lips. He nods, once, firm and final. He won’t be broken by this. Neither would Tony. Steve would want better than that. “We’ll get there, though.”

“Was he happy?”

“As a clam. And about two feet tall.”

Bucky laughs breathlessly. “No.”

“How’d you keep him alive? One strong breeze would’ve knocked him over.”

“He was a little spitfire. Peter, have I told you about the time he tried to fight four guys at once over something they said to me?”

As Bucky launches into the story, Peter’s breathing evens out. Tony leans back against the pillow and closes his eyes.

Maybe they really would get there.


End file.
